From Guerrilla Blooms

Illustration by Anne Le Guern

Spanish

English

I look in the mirror

I look at the Indian women

I look at the colonizer

I spread my legs

and shove

              flowers
              cactus
              animal
              god

the cosmos inside me

I explain to the god

with a female bird’s face

that I have nothing inside

that it’s just a creator’s fantasy

that in me no one can be born

because nothing survives

***

exiled

              illiterate

                           errant

                                        b o r d e r l i n e

I want to be

gold     india      morena

Una india

who makes them

forget my history

and a part of yours

Bird doesn’t want to be god

or to have the face of a bird

She has existential attacks

and would like to read anything

other than a calendar

She wants to dance this night

of skulls without flags

to smoke on buds in bloom

between seas

cactus and desert

between jungle and dew

***

To lie outstretched beneath heavenly bodies

of ancient gods

and reject her forefathers

             I called her

Ngünechen & Quetzalcoatl

Negrita     Ñaña     Compa

We speak in tongues

of sad days

and of hunger

a hunger that can only

be spoken

when you are hungry

She didn’t want to be an ancestor

I tell her that I didn’t either

And so we say our goodbyes

listening to songs

on this old wurlitzer

that snuffs the glow of war

             in this final dance.